Happy Halloween, Happy Thanksgiving, and Merry Christmas!

It's holiday time!  Let's talk about what's happened since October, shall we?

October saw the birth of my first niece, miss Kyleigh. She came in pretty early, so that was a little scary, but everything went well and she is just a normal little baby now.  She's super tiny, but she's perfectly healthy.  :)  Halloween was in October, too, but Jay and I didn't do anything for it.  We didn't carve a pumpkin, attend a party, or get dressed up.  We did, however, both go to work. :-/  School the following day was fun, though.  Those kids were so hopped up on sugar!  Also, I got the reject candy--which included Reese's peanut butter cups!!  What?!

November was, of course, Thanksgiving.  I had the entire week off from school, but I don't remember doing much relaxing.  My mom and I went out shopping on Black Friday, but we didn't get up super early; we went out at about noon, and it wasn't really very crazy.  It was a little busier than normal, but we weren't fighting people off or anything.  If we had, though, I'd have gone home: I don't play that game.  I also got to see my Brittany in November!  We went for pedicures, had lunch, went out for dinner, and just felt like old times.  :)  It was quite lovely.

This month, December, has been rather busy.  My mom, my sister, and my husband have birthdays this month (in that order), and, of course, there's Christmas--needless to say, I've done a lot of shopping between Thanksgiving and now.  My students finished their semester on Wednesday, and they took semester exams in all their classes.  I didn't get to write my semester exam because the whole district uses the same exams, so I was kind of nervous about that.  But it was out of my control, so why worry, right?  :)  I'm still enjoying teaching, and I still really enjoy working with my co-workers!

Somewhere in all this, Jay and I started really looking for a house.  Our lease is up in March (finally!), so we're ready to become homeowners... we're pretty sure.  We've done a lot of looking, and even made an offer.  We didn't end up buying the house upon which we made an offer, so we're still looking.  We've seen several houses and liked a few of them, but we've only made that one offer thus far.  Jay loves looking at and for houses, but I don't love it.  I just want to find the house, and then furnish and decorate it.  I'm already looking at couches and thinking about paint colors!  Pinterest, of course, has become like a crack of sorts--there are so many cool decorating and crafting ideas there!!  I show things to Jay all the time, but he's pretty sure we should have a house before I start planning how I decorate.   Gah.

Our Christmases were wonderful!  We got to continue the tradition of waking up early (like 6:15) with my parents and Katie's family at my parents' on Christmas morning (even though this year we celebrated on the 23rd because Katie and Jeff went to Houston to visit his family), and we also got to hang out with Jay's parents and sister and brother-in-law on Christmas eve.  We had a great time with our families, and it continued into today.  Since the Gregsons and the Shives had already done all their respective gift exchanging, neither family had any Christmas plans.  Jay's parents came to my parents' house, and we ate lunch together and then the boys watched The Town while the girls crafted.  I really enjoyed spending the last few days with my families.  :) 

Hopefully, your season has been wonderful as well.  Merry Christmas! 

Houses

There are so many houses for sale.

And there are so few houses that I/we want to purchase.